ChinaTechWatch has a great column today, about a Chinese mining company Admax resources, that just changed its name to China YouTV (CYTV.OB). The firm is currently involved in mining, but wants to expand into online video, a completely unrelated line of business.

This is so typical of Chinese companies, if one thing does not work they just try someting completely different. They probably heard that YouTube is a big success in the US. Well, they likely reasoned, then we should do that here too of course. Not hindered by any knowledge about internet, video or the competition they start pooring money into a venture that will surely fail. It’s a pity for their investors, and it explains why I only invest in Chinese companies where I know the management personally.

An interesting passage from the press release explaining their strategy:

Today is World’s Consumer Rights Day, and because of that the Shanghai Labor and Social Security published a list of the top-10 most common employment scams. Some could have happened in Europe as well, such as that the job is very different from the job description that was advertised. But others you would not often encounter there, a few examples:

– If you want to get a job at a certain company, you first need to do a paid training course. The company, or at least the recruiter, earns money from this.

– You have to submit a sample of your design work when applying for a job. These works are often used commercially, even if the applicant was not offered a job.

– When applying for a sales job, you have to buy the products that you need to sell. I remember a story where it turned out that the price is much higher than the real market price, and the sales jobs were actually fake.

– Everybody is fired right after the probation period, because workers in China earn less during the first months on the job. Of course you can get re-hired, but only at the lower probation period salary.

The main problem is that there are too many people looking for jobs in this city, and therefore there is a lot of competition to get a job. Each year there is a huge amount of university graduates that cannot find jobs and there is a steady flow of migrant workers arriving in the city. Often these groups are quite naive. Migrant workers because they are new in a big city, and students because they have not encountered the problems of real life yet. Unscrupulous entrepreneurs know that these groups easily fall for these traps, and use it to earn money.

Shanghai-based online gaming company Spill Group Asia is looking for a business development manager. Responsibilities for this position include:
– website promotion, negotiating and executing cooperation agreements (both in China and other Asian countries)
– website data analysis (using tools such as Google Analytics) for our gaming sites in Asia
– research on internet trends in China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia
– defining strategies to grow the market share of Spill Group Asia’s casual gaming websites

The ideal candidate would have the following qualifications:
– Chinese national with fluent English, both oral and written (essential, please do not apply if your English is not fluent)
– University degree with computer science, technology or marketing major
– Good communication skills, both with Chinese and foreigners
– Willing and able to take responsibility
– Being able to work independently
– Several years of experience in advertising or internet industry
– Enjoys playing online games, although he/she should not be addicted 🙂

We offer a very competitive package to the right candidate. If you are interested please send your resume and cover letter with salary expectations (in English) to hr@spillgroupasia.com.

What happens if your house is in the middle of a redevelopment zone? In China that normally means that you have bad luck. You might get some form of compensation, but you need to move out before the bulldozers come. No way around it it seems, at least most of the time. A family in Chongqing (rumoured to have good government connections) refused to accept compensation and move. The picture shows what happened: they now live on a 12 meter high cliff in one of the most densely populated cities in China!

(picture from Metro.co.uk, through Shanghaiist)

Update: It turns out that my media sources were wrong, the China Herald reports that the house is not owned by protesters, but by the construction company. It is used as the constructor’s temporary residence.

This Thursday Starbucks will be organizing its second annual Coffee Break event. This means that from 10 AM to 12 noon you will get a free tall coffee at all Starbucks Coffee outlets in China. I have at least 3 Starbucks Coffee outlets within a 10 minute walk from my office, so I might drop by to see how many people are willing to wait in line to get a free coffee.

The event will not be limited to China, but also takes place in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. Last year China was not included in this list yet. During the Coffee Break session you can ask questions about Starbucks coffee or its coffee brewing process. During last year’s event many stores gave away samples of their food as well.

I think this is a smart idea. I expect lots of people to blog about it, which means free publicity. Also I think that a lot of Chinese have not tried Starbucks coffee yet, and this may be a good opportunity to lure them into the stores.

The Shanghai Daily also reports about the event, but it seems the editors did not check the Starbucks website, because they report that the event will take place on Friday. So it may also be fun to stand outside Starbucks outlets in Shanghai on Friday morning and see angry customers who do not get their expected free coffee. Or did I miss another press release saying that this event will be organized one day later in China?

April 23 is coming closer. That day Gary and I plan to fly to Lhasa, via Chengdu, for our mountain bike trip. The idea is to ride from Lhasa to Kathmandu, a distance of over 1200 kilometers, through the Himalaya. Over the past weeks we have started our preparations, but because we are both quite busy running our companies we did not spend enough time on it yet. But things are changing quickly, we have now set the dates, determined a rough itinerary, and contacted people in Tibet to sort out the logistical problems that come with a biking trip on the roof of the world.

We plan to stay in Lhasa for four days to acclimatize, which is one of the most important preparations for the trip. Lhasa, at 3650 meter altitude, is the lowest point in Tibet of the trip, and we have to make sure that our bodies are used to this before we jump on our bikes. Altitude sickness is very dangerous and can even kill you, so we take this seriously. The advantage is that we can do a lot of the preparations for the actual bike ride during these days. Buying good tents and warm sleeping bags (it will still be freezing during part of the trip, and we might have to camp in the snow), and arranging a jeep or truck that carries our luggage, food and oxygen tanks (hopefully we won’t need those).

The good thing is that we can also still do some work in Lhasa, we plan to take a hotel with good internet connections. We will leave Lhasa just before the Chinese May Holidays, and should arrive in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu about 3 weeks later. This means that we are effectively only two working weeks away from the office. During the trip we should be able to get online sometimes, but it seems that our original plan to upload video’s to Tudou everyday will be very difficult. It would be cool to blog from Mount Everest Base Camp, though (maybe it works, keep checking this blog). But I plan to only answer emails in emergency situations – which may actually be one of the most difficult things of the trip for me.

During the ride there will be a small camera crew filming our trip. Saturday night we met one of the camera men to discuss the ideas for the program they plan to shoot. Depending on the result, the program will be aired on several Chinese TV channels and maybe even some foreign stations. Of course it will be also be available on Tudou in a compressed format.

I just created an account at the official Olympic ticketing website for Beijing 2008. This is possible for all Chinese and for foreigners living in China (you need to have at least a 6-months visa). The tickets are not yet available, but you can now already set up your profile there, so that you can be the first one when they start selling the tickets next month. This does not guarantee that you get tickets, though, because if events are oversold the tickets will be randomly distributed (which in China probably means that you need to have connections to get tickets, or buy them on the black market).

I plan to watch at least a couple of events next year August in Beijing. The opening ceremony of course, and probably some athletics events. Likely I will fly up and down between Shanghai and Beijing, because prices for hotels are outrageous. Or maybe I can stay at my parents-in-law, whose apartment is just a 5 minute drive from the Olympic stadium area.

When I was in Beijing over Chinese New Year I checked with the hotel where I had my wedding in 2005. That hotel is virtually next to the Olympic Stadium and I could hardly recognize the area around it anymore (the small tree-lined street right behind it is now an 8 lane highway). My wife and I talked to the manager, and found that they still have rooms available, but that their normal prices in RMB will be changed into USD. This means that their room rates do not start at RMB 1700 anymore, but at a whopping USD 1700 per night (8 times as high). And even at that price they cannot guarantee you the rooms, they want to wait a bit longer to see if they can increase prices even more. All other hotels in the area are fully booked already, so it seems to be a smart strategy.

And that gives me a new business idea: You should rent some small apartments around the Olympic site for one year starting this September, leaving them empty for a whole year (or sub-let them to students during the academic year, there are several universities in the area), and then rent them out to foreigners during the Olympics. A USD 400/month 2-bedroom apartment can probably be rented out for USD 500 per day during the Olympics. It’s a bit of a hassle, but it seems like a low risk investment.

Yesterday Gary and I drove to Taihu, a huge lake (it has a 400 kilometer perimeter) close to Suzhou to do some mountain bike practicing on the hills around the lake (we rode close to Xishan). We put our bikes into Tudou’s new SUV (a Hyundai Tucson), and they fit in easily. The car drove quite well, and it was nice to sit a bit higher in Shanghai’s traffic, because you have a much better overview of all the people around you. Driving this car reminded me of the Jeep Cherokee (with a 4-liter, 6-cylinder engine) that I used to have in Beijing. Because the new highway was practically deserted so we could even test the top speed, with 3 persons (my wife also joined), bikes and luggage we managed to drive 180 km/h. We arrived at Taihu after about 1.5 hours. We first had a nice seafood lunch at an upscale lakeside restaurant and then drove to the mountain bike site.

There is a small mountain dedicated to mountain bikers, something I have not seen before in China. In Shanghai we never train uphill rides, and that was something we could feel while trying to ride up the mountain. We both had to get off our bikes a few times to catch our breath, it was much more difficult than we thought. But we both made it, and the downhill afterwards was fantastic. We heard there will be some official races here early April, and we looked at some of the tracks for that. I could not believe that people dare to go down some of the smalll tracks that we saw. I am not easily afraid on my bike, but some of these track just seemed physically impossible to ride down and I don’t think I’ll ever dare to ride my bike on them. If you want to go here, drive the SuHu expressway to exit Xishan, go straight ahead at the tollgate and take the second right (the road following the lake shore). After about 6 km you will see a cable car lift on your right, about 200 meter after that is the entrance to the mountain bike tracks. It’s also a nice place to go hiking or running, with great views of the lake and the islands around it.

On the way back to our car Gary and I saw an accident, it happened right in front of our eyes. A Shanghai car was driving a bit too fast, and did not notice a slight curve in the road. At the last moment the driver pulled his steering wheel to make the turn, but he pulled too hard. The result was a crash in which he ended up in the ditch on his side of the road. The car was totally wrecked. I wondered whether the driver was hurt, but was hesitant to approach the car. But after about 30 seconds the driver managed to open his door and walked out. He seemed OK although he did not walk very steady. And what was the first thing he did? Looking at the damage he had just caused? No, he did not even look at it. He got out and took a pee next to his car! At the same time he took out his mobile phone to call a friend. A very strange sight. I suspect he was completely drunk. We did not check it out, and continued our ride, glad that we did not ride our bikes on his side of the road.